Giampaolo Bianconi Livres

The acerbically funny and intimate screenplay for acclaimed visual artist Martine Syms's debut film, The African Desperate. The African Desperate follows Palace Bryant on one very long day in 2017 that starts with her MFA graduation in upstate New York and ends at a Chicago Blue Line Station. Set against the lush backdrop of late summer, Palace navigates the pitfalls of self-actualization and the fallacies of the art world. Shot through with Syms's celebrated conceptual grit, humor, social commentary, and vivid visual language, The African Desperate leads us through picturesque landscapes and artists studios, from academic critiques to backseat hookups, and from the night of a wild graduation party to the morning of a lonely trip back home.

Exuberantly colorful and sometimes irreverent digital works by American artist Petra Cortright Known for her video works available on YouTube and in galleries, and for her leading role in the creation of "Net art," Los Angeles-based artist Petra Cortright (born 1986) experiments with the imagery of physical bodies in digital spaces, exploiting the main formal properties of video software. Her videos have at times proved controversial (such as her works with strippers in VirtuaGirl), at times heralded and lauded. Cortright is also known for her paintings created with digital software, mixing concrete and abstract elements and printed on a wide variety of material. Such works are the product of an experimentation with Photoshop layers on a so-called "mother file," enriched with the use of digital tools and then manipulated through industrial printing techniques. This first monograph on her work includes writings on Cortright by fellow artists Martine Syms and Paul Chan, and by MoMA curatorial assistant Giampaolo Bianconi.